Online video watching is growing according to comScore, which tallied 21.4 billion videos watched in the month of July, the biggest month for watching Internet video yet. That’s up 88 percent from last year. Google’s YouTube streamed 9 billion of these videos, followed by video sites from Viacom and Microsoft. The variety of offerings is unlimited. The following videos are a great example:

This amazing sand art by Ukranian artist Kseniya Simonova won Ukraine’s version of “America’s Got Talent.” She uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and “sand painting” skills to interpret Germany’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII.

One viewer commented, “This is just another example of how deep World War II, and I, affected generations of people. As many as 80 million people lost their lives in WW II, and untold property, cities, resources, etc. As unthinkable as it is, the same pattern of political and economical forces that led to the war are being played out again on the world stage. Contrary to what many may think, slow action to halt aggressive regimes and arms build up was a major factor, it could have been averted with quicker action.”

Many more fascinating video examples of sand art can be found on the same YouTube page.

“Once, the Broadway Limited was synonymous with luxury and speed, movie stars and high-powered businessmen. Maid and valet service was no problem, and a million-dollar haircut cost just 50 cents.”

So reads the opening paragraph in a a 1995 New York Times article about the end of a famed train run, whose passengers included international figures like President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Winston Churchill and Fidel Castro, movers and shakers of the business world, and screen stars like Gloria Swanson, Irene Dunne, Pat O’Brien and Paul Douglas. Now a Florida-based company has brought the Broadway Limited back to life in miniature, with high-end model trains that are sold to rail aficionados all over the world. All aboard!

Make money with your vids!

Uploaded a video that’s gone viral? If you have, and that YouTube vid is accumulating lots of views, you could earn bucks from it. How do you know if your vid is eligible? Click the link to find out.

On your magazine page – video!

It’s straight out of a Harry Potter scenario: a magazine with moving photos. As soon as you turn the page, a 2-inch video screen embedded on heavy-stock paper starts playing. The first mag-vid ads will be for CBS and Pepsi in Entertainment Weekly’s mid-September TV preview issue. But don’t look for it in your edition, unless you’re in Los Angeles or New York areas. See a preview of the ad at YouTube.

If you live in Delaware, you’re zooming along at 9.91 megabytes per second. But if you’re in California, the heart of computer software development, you might be poking along at 6.64 mbps. Internet users in Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts have the fastest broadband speed, according to a study done by Speed Matters.

Slowest download time sufferers? Montana, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. They’re drumming fingers at well under 2.5 mbps.

Internet hits a midlife crisis

When British physicist Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web, he released it to the world without needing permission. Nor did he have to contend with spam, hackers, or security firewalls. Back then, authoritarian regimes weren’t blocking access to sites and services within their borders. The Internet has come of age, and with it are the typical complications of midlife. What new challenges lie ahead as the Internet matures?

Seeing double

For those who can handle doing more than one thing at a time and like being mobile, the world’s first truly dual-screen laptop will allow computer users to multi-task while on the move. A slide out monitor screen doubles your pleasure, doubles your fun while on the run! Expect to see it on sale by the end of the year.

But not everyone is sold on the idea, which Adweek calls “Pay-per-Tweet.” Alan Wolk, creative strategist at The Toad Stool, a digital-advertising consultant, thinks Twitter is the wrong medium because many people don’t spent a lot of time reading tweets or are skeptical about sales pitches.

Name the movie, the character, and the actor who said the line: “You know we just don’t recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they’re happening. Back then I thought, well, there’ll be other days. I didn’t realize that that was the only day.”

Send your answer to me via email (address below). The first three readers to guess correctly will be announced in next week’s Surfin’ Safari.

Last week’s movie trivia winners were Beverly from Kentucky, Susan Gauthier of Indian Harbour Beach, Fla., and Bud Meyers of Satellite Beach, Fla., who correctly identified the character Poe, played by actor Strother Martin in the 1975 movie “Hard Times.”

Seventy years ago on Sept. 1, 1939, German forces invaded Poland, its planes bombing Polish cities, including the capital, Warsaw, without any warning or declaration of war.

Sixty-four years ago on Sept. 2, 1945, Japanese officials signed an unconditional surrender, finally bringing to an end six years of world war. In the presence of 50 Allied generals and other officials, the Japanese envoys boarded the American battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay to sign the surrender document.